In perhaps their biggest game publisher deal yet,
Valve has announced secured the rights to distribute a number of PC game titles from
Electronic Arts via their
Steam service. EA has previously handled downloadable PC game titles via their own EA Downloader service but now
Spore,
Spore Creepy and Cute Parts Pack,
Warhammer Online,
Mass Effect,
FIFA Manager 09, and
Need For Speed Undercover are now all available to purchase and download via Steam (sorry, rest of the world, this is for North America only).
In addition to those games, EA will also offer
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3,
Dead Space and the upcoming PC port of
Mirror's Edge via Steam in the near future. When contacted by Big Download, an EA spokesperson would not comment if any of EA's older PC games might find their way onto Steam as well. If you have been wanting to buy EA games but have been avoiding purchasing them because of EA's use of DRM in their recent titles,
a message of Valve's Steam forums states that the EA games on Steam do not use third party DRM or SecuROM set-up, saying, " the only DRM it uses is Steam itself."